Goals, No-Goals and Own Goals: A Debate on Goal Directed and Intentional Behaviour

by Alan Montefiore

There is an urgent need to assess the impact of studies in neuroscience and animal behaviour on how we are to think about ourselves. In this book three scientists and three philosophers offer a response to this need by engaging in a stimulating debate that transcends the usual boundaries between scientific and philosophical enquiry. Originating from university seminars held in Oxford over many years, each author takes a highly developed position; the scientists argue with each other quite as much as with the philosophers, and vice versa. The result is a very unusual debate which is equally accessible to philosophers and scientists. The central theme is the significance and nature of goal-directed and intentional behaviour. At one extreme, David McFarland, Reader in Animal Behaviour at the University of Oxford, brings into radical question the need for either of these concepts, at least in the scientific study of animal behaviour. At the other extreme, the Oxford philosopher, Alan Montefiore, argues that such concepts are indispensable to any explication of the meaningful use of language and that we must therefore acknowledge their importance in understanding the nature of human behaviour.

320 pages, Library Binding

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Alan Claude Robin Goldsmid Montefiore was a British philosopher and Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He was a co-founder and Emeritus President of the Forum for European Philosophy, as well as Joint President of the Wiener Library, and a Chair of Council of the Froebel Educational Institute.
Montefiore was the son of Leonard Montefiore (1889–1961), who had been the Wiener Library's second president and later its chairman. He is also grandson of Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore (1858–1938), a past president of the Anglo-Jewish Association. Montefiore received an Honorary Silver Medal of Jan Masaryk at the Czech Republic Ambassador's residence in London in November 2019.